Leading from the front issuu

was so excited to be able to get enough money together
to buy it.
On this first and over several visits since, Pat showed
me the room that he used to live in as a youngster, pointing
to the window that he leaned out of on one occasion
after a rugby match to clear his head. I recall Pat looking
into the downstairs cupboard and noticing the carpet,
exclaimed this was the very same carpet his parents had
installed throughout the house.
More important than all of this of course, I began to
learn about what community meant to Pat. When he
asked why we moved to Napier I said that I had wished
to be part of a stronger more caring and cohesive community
than my children could possibly hope to grow
up in in Auckland. This was all the encouragement Pat
needed to invite me to a Pilot City Trust meeting. Before
I knew it, I was a trustee and a year or two later, chair of
that Trust.
Through that experience my world view was transformed.
I began to very much believe in and still champion
to this day a model whereby social wellbeing is best
achieved through enabling everyone in our communities
to realise their full potential, without making judgments
of their worth based on how they might appear or their
background. Of Pat’s model (inspired by the late John
Robson), of a city of 60,000 people “not too large to know
itself”, and if Napier can’t make this model work, who or
where can. This is what his billboard Napier builds communities,
Not prisons was all about. Pat had worked at
the coalface of that vision for many years by the time I
met him, through his involvement with the YMCA and in
supporting the establishment of the Pilot City Trust in
the early 1980s.
I often thought of Pat as a bit like that toothbrush
they used to advertise “getting into those hard to reach
places”. Pat has through years of tireless effort and time
“I often thought of Pat as a
bit like that toothbrush they
used to advertise “gets into
those hard to reach places”.
spent, managed to establish trusting relationships with
people from all walks of life — whether they be patched
gang members, whānau of prison inmates, young rangatahi,
victims of domestic violence or abuse, local politicians,
members of the business community, or whatever.
He is able to draw on an immense and deep connection
with a uniquely wide range of Napier communities going
right back through his days of involvement with Hawke’s
Bay Rugby and in his drapery and carpet retail business
days.
Quite simply, in my view, Pat is a living legend or phenomenon.
He has a stamina and resolve which has no
equal. He is indefatigable. It has been a true blessing
to come to know Pat and I have learnt a great deal from
him. I can never pin him down and nor should you try. I
often felt that Pat talked in riddles or as I would sometimes
put it “figure 8s”, lurching from point to point, idea
to idea, but within the narrative always a gem and an
essential truth revealed.
Pat has lived and walked a very long life and continues
to walk long distances to promote the mental health and
wellbeing of youth at risk to this day. I believe Pat’s contribution
to Napier and his ethic is founded in the loving
and spiritually strong household that he grew up in,
known as Repokite to his family and which I am now so
fortunate to occupy.
Go well Pat, you’re a legend.
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Napier Pilot City Trust – for a kinder, fairer city